Deello

"Federated bypass failed, video not available in any region"

I think that's the hidden cause of increasing phone pricing. I'm still using my note 9. The battery is starting to give so maybe this time next year I finally upgrade.

I agree on the maintenance costs and do believe that the costs were justified but I can't sell my horse armor and map packs from the same era at a GameStop, now or then. Doesn't matter if I have a digital or physical edition. We normalized this.

Xbox Gamepass and the Nintendo Switch online console collections are the future regardless of what we want. We are simply rehashing the launcher wars with individual titles at this point. We traded ownership for convenience and somewhere along the way we became comfortable with the same IP being remastered, re-released, remade or reimagined on a yearly basis.

Just look at overwatch and counter strike. New game comes out and the developers "erased" the old game/version. We are reaching peak games as a service where you pay for everything but own nothing. I was never interested in Stadia but wasn't their whole business model a subscription service with individual game titles as microtransactions?

I had a CD collection back in the day, still do, but it's getting harder to find somewhere to play those discs. Most new cars don't even come with a CD player. So now I can either repurchase on some digital platform or pay indefinitely for a streaming service. Both give the content without ownership. Why would gaming be different?

Look at what Nintendo did with the switch. Every physical copy has a unique license built in. So if you buy a used game, there is a real possibility that it won't play despite having it physically in your hand. We've had always-online-DRM for offline single player games for years now.

Again, I agree with you. Its just that this has been coming for a very long time.

Gaming has had subscription since at least the early 2000's. WoW, XBL and Eve are some examples off the top of my head. Some even required the purchase of additional hardware like the PS2 network adapter. Anybody remember Final Fantasy XI or the now defunct Matrix MMO?

Today every console has some form of online subscription. If anything, gamers normalized the online subscription model.

$999
I have no use for a HR smart watch but at this price it's not even a possibility. Hundreds of dollars is acceptable but this is a hard no for me. My Casio G-Shock GBD 200 + GadgetBridge has all the features I want from a smart watch and costs about $150.
However, I will say kudos to Masimo for sticking it to Apple. Not many people can go against a giant like that and win.

In other words, they took the Apple approach to right to repair. Disappointing but not unexpected. This is the same company that got rid of their "don't be evil" motto after all.

That is was what they claimed, you are right. However that felt more like a boilerplate response meant to avoid a payout. Again, she asked for clarity on what that meant but never got a real response. I'm sure even now she didn't get an answer. She was an account executive at the end of the year, not a greeter at Walmart. She was not on a PIP and was exceeding her KPIs, according to the video. Even her boss was shocked. If they had real data to prove their point, they would have brought it up then and there. Instead she got crickets. The whole thing reminds of the King of the Hill episode where Dale gets hired to fire people.

Last in first out, wasn't that what was claimed in the actual video. Didn't she bring up being there for only a month? And even then, that was time worked during the holidays. So the person just finished onboarding and was let go immediately after. Sounds like her specific case follows what they do in Sweden. In the video she asked again and again what she did and was met with a wall of we will talk about it later. I'm on her side wholeheartedly but let's not try to normalize this behavior with laws. A new job should be a time for celebration and excitement.

As a user of software, I salute you.

I feel this is it but surely there are other apps following this model. I'm assuming they are probably the biggest but definitely not the only ones doing it. For good* ad-free software that is being actively developed and will get used probably every day for years, $100 seems more than fair to me. Beats paying a subscription indefinitely imo. I paid for the Plex lifetime pass for similar reasons and that was worth every penny.
*Good is subjective, just because you wouldn't pay doesn't mean others won't.

Edit: formatting

Yeah but you're not the CEO of the company.

I'm guessing mobile users who don't pay for apps.